Heartless
by untitled1494
Summary: She wasn't heartless. She had a heart, she could love, she DID love, right?


She was Bellatrix Black.

People shrunk from her as she walked in the hallways, back straight (thanks to mother), head high, eyes maliciously glinting. With each forceful fall of her foot, people cringed, people _flinched. _She looked straight ahead, and kept a smirk on her lips that said _I know something that you don't, and it isn't good for you. _People genuinely feared her.

She loved it.

It gave her the confidence, the power, to walk the stone floors as she did. She was an awesome and scary presence. She loved that when she wanted something, anything, she got it. Not that she had no patience, she truly had an abundance of it, but she liked knowing that she needn't ever put her patience into use. She loved that people went out of their way to please her, to step from her path; she loved that no one dare stand up to her. Rumors flew of her misdeeds and bullyings, rumors that made her out as a bad guy, someone who'd snap you like the twig in her path you were, someone you did _not _want to upset. She loved it. She loved it. She loved it.

People said _evil. _They said cruel, and vicious; sadistic. They said many foul things, and she loved them all. The scarier, the more powerful. The only one she could not stand was _heartless._ Lacking a heart. Incapable of love, of feeling. Heartless.

She had a heart, she could love, she _did _love. Just because she was capable of cruelty didn't mean she was incapable of love. She remembered the very first time she heard it:

_She has just hexed a first year, Mary MacDonald, for tripping her. She knows it was an accident, but the girl needed to learn. As she walks away from the crying figure with the rest of the crowd that doesn't care enough to help her, she hears one boy on the outside of the circle forming around the girl whisper to another boy_ _"That Black girl is_ heartless._ She just does what pleases her..."_ _He says other things. she is sure, but she has passed him by then._ Heartless_. For some reason, it hits her differently than those that she has heard before in her five years at the school. Heartless._

Afterwards, she went to the bathroom and cried with Moaning Myrtle, mostly because no one would be there to hear or see her. She cringed whenever she looked back on it, thinking only of weakness. She was Bellatrix Black. She didn't cry.

She could love. She _did _love. She loved her sisters Andy and Cissy. She loved her little cousins Sirius and Regulus. She loved her black cat, Vega, and she loved her father. Why couldn't that boy recognize that? Why didn't he know of the presence of her heart? It wasn't fair to her, and she was upset, so she went to talk to Andromeda, as she always did when she was upset.

_"Someone called me heartless today," She tells her younger sister, who doesn't look up from the book she's reading. _

_"So?" The sister responds, still not looking up. "People call you lots of things." Now, she lookes up at her red-eyed sister, realizing what's wrong, her expression is sympathetic. "Since when do you care, Bella?"_

_"Andy, he called me _heartless. _Do you realize what that actually means?"_

_"Err, lacking a heart. Incapable of feelings or caring. Cruel."_

_"And you don't see the issue in that?"_

_"Yes, but I don't see why it's worse than the others."_

_"I don't--I don't know."_

_Here, Andromeda shuts her book and leans across the table to her sister, who looks on the verge of tears, even more so trying to hold them back. "Bella." Just this comforts Bellatrix, she can always count on her sister for a pick up. "What people say about you doesn't define who you are. Do _you _think you're heartless?"_

_"No. I can love. I _do _love."_

_"Than you have a heart, and I know better than any that you do. You aren't heartless, and you musn't let people convince you that you are."_

_"Thanks, Andy." Bellatrix is looking down. She isn't used to getting such sentimental pep talks. _

_"Bella, you know I love you," Andy replies as a 'you're welcome'. It means more to Bellatrix, though._

She could love. She _did _love. She was Bellatrix Black, she wasn't hurt by the things people said about her, she gloried in them, because she knew they were true. But she couldn't accept heartless, she couldn't be heartless.

She wasn't heartless, not then, at least.

But when Andromeda left, ran off with that mudblood, became a blood traitor, she took Bellatrix's heart. She ripped it out, and threw it on the ground, and stomped on it until it stopped beating, leaving her older sister heartless.

But she still had Narcissa and Sirius and Regulus and Vega and her father. She loved them, so she wasn't heartless, right? But after Andy left, Bellatrix looked at her family differently. They weren't her loved ones, they were her potential heartbreaks. They were her heartbreaks. Her father is never home. Her cat dies. Sirius is sorted into Griffindor, befriends blood traitors and werewolves, soon after becomes a blood traitor. Regulus stands up to her, stands up to Voldemort! He claims he can leave, and defeat him. He dies before Bellatrix could kill him. Okay, she didn't love, not anymore. What was love, anyway, but a bond of blood and tears? She didn't _need_ a heart.

So she was heartless, and once she was heartless, it opened up a new window of oppurtunity for her, for what had been holding her back but her love? But her heart?

She was Bellatrix Black. She was evil, cruel, vicious, sadistic. She was heartless, now, and she loved it.


End file.
